


Not Broken, Just Bent

by supernatasha



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-09
Updated: 2013-07-17
Packaged: 2017-12-18 04:47:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/875788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/supernatasha/pseuds/supernatasha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arya is not here. Sansa is.</p><p>"I think I was waiting for someone, anyone, to come along and want me. And in the absence of any actual person, I… I imagined perhaps Arya would want me."</p><p>"I want you."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Heartache

The first time Gendry gazes upon the distant walls of Winterfell, a shiver runs through him. This was- _is-_ Arya’s home. It’s where she was returning to, all that time she spent with him on the Kingsroad, to see these stone walls and know at last she was safe. The thought stabs a piercing knife into Gendry’s gut and he distracts himself quickly. It’s best not to think of her much. He pulls his furs around himself tighter and continues on his way.

 

For the first entire week he is there, he struggles to find where he can go or who he can talk to about reopening the smith. He went to see it, all ashes and dust, and he knows he can make it great again, light fires in the hearth. He keeps getting bounced back and forth from this person to that until someone advises him to go straight to the castle and find either Lord Rickon or Queen Sansa. It was, after all, their realm.

When he does, nervously walking into the council chambers, only Rickon Stark is there, not the Queen. He doesn’t look up when Gendry approaches, talking in hushed tones to the woman behind him and pointing at a map laid out on a long wooden table.

Gendry kneels on a knee and waits to be acknowledged.

It doesn’t take long before a low gruff voice says, “You may speak.”

Gendry is shocked to look up and realize it belonged to Rickon. He hadn’t expected such a guttural sound from his slender throat.

“M’lord, my name is Gendry. I was with the Brotherhood without Banners before they disbanded,” he says, purposefully skipping over any family names. He isn’t a Waters anymore, not after he was knighted, but he also knows illegitimate knighthoods can cost him more than being a bastard. “I studied to be a smith in King’s Landing for several years until the War of the Five Kings, after which I took to the Kingsroad and came to Winterfell to reopen the forge here.”

“Stand,” Rickon commands, his lithe form moving forward from the table.

He does as asked.

“Why Winterfell?”

“I don’t… m’lord, I am loyal to Robb Stark’s armies,” he lies.

“And yet you are from King’s Landing. You don’t support Stannis? Or Tommen’s claim, nor that of the Dragon Queen?”

There is a thin truce between Queen in the South, Daenerys, and the one in the North, held delicately together by Jon Targaryen. He considers for a moment whether to continue weaving a lie or come clean. His eyes flick from Rickon to the woman in the black gown and tangled hair beside him and the way one eyebrow is raised skeptically at his direction. He sighs and admits, “I came because I thought Arya might be here.”

At the mention of her name, both the woman and Rickon flinch visibly. Rickon moves with more speed than Gendry would have thought possible, the way his sister did sometimes, and there was a dagger pressed to Gendry’s throat.

“You know my sister?” he demands.

A small choked noise escapes Gendry’s throat and he refrains from smashing Rickon’s face in with his fists.

“Let him talk,” the woman says and it surprises Gendry how authoritative she is with the Queen’s brother.

The steel blade presses tighter against Gendry’s windpipe and he stops breathing for a moment, hands clenching and muscles tight, until Rickon loosens his grip and repeats, “You know my sister?”

“I did,” Gendry gasps. “On the Kingsroad. She ran from the Gold Cloaks.”

The blade vanishes into Rickon’s sleeve and a new urgency reclaims his handsome features.  “When did you last see her? _Where?_ ”

“It was years ago, m’lord. Before the Freys…” Gendry hesitates. “Before the Freys betrayed Robb Stark.”

“Years? That was lifetimes ago,” Rickon’s voice sounds hollow when he turns to the woman. “Osha, Sansa’ll want to hear this; it’s our only lead.”

Osha, the Wildling. He had heard of her, though only vaguely. From rumors he had surmised that either she was his caretaker or he was hers. Even now it was hard to tell which as she nodded and walked off.

Rickon stares at Gendry, who felt like squirming under his pale blue eyes. “I apologize for threatening you,” he says quietly.

Gendry nods. Soon, Osha returns and tells Gendry, “Go on up. Sansa wants to see you.”

She points at a doorway and Gendry takes the staircase, leading straight to the royal chambers. He takes a moment at the closed wood to collect himself before knocking.

“Enter,” he hears, and twists the knob in.

The Queen in the North. Sansa Stark. She looks nothing like her sister. While Arya had mad grey eyes, Sansa’s are an extraordinary pale blue. Where Arya’s skin was tanned constantly and streaked with dirt, Sansa’s is an exquisite frail porcelain. Arya’s thin lips were always set in a hard line, Sansa’s full ones are carved into her face in an expression he could never fathom.

But he can recognize the confidence, the determination, in both of them. A hard strength betraying their outward frailty. The same long fingers grip a long quill where Arya had gripped Needle.

Two sides of the same coin.

"It's you? Gendry?" the Queen asks, her voice slightly above a whisper. "You're the one who knew my sister?"

"As well as anyone could know Arya, m'lady." Unlike Arya, this Stark doesn't shy away from the title, leaning forward into it with a grace her sister could never replicate. “We spent quite a bit of time on the road when she was disguised as a boy. I saw through her, though. She was incredibly stubborn. And brave. She helped us escape from Harrenhal.”

“That certainly sounds like her, staging coups and rebellions, wearing the clothes of a boy,” Sansa smiles, a faraway look imposed on her features. “And you don't know where she is now?"

Gendry shakes his head. "I thought she may have gone to Riverrun."

She flinches at that, at the mention of the place where her mother and brother died. “You don’t know?”

He shrugs. “After the Hound, things were a bit of a blur.”

Sansa’s head jerks back, the tendons in her neck standing out. “The Hound? Sandor Clegane?”

“You know him?”

“Was he there?” she deflects his question.

Gendry nods. “Arya blamed him for Mycah’s death and he had a trial by combat.”

Sansa slumps the tiniest bit. “Did he..?” she trails off.

“He won.”

Sansa lips curve up. “Yes, yes he would win. Do you know anymore of Arya?”

He shook his head. “Only that I had hoped she would be here. M’lady, I came here to open a forge again after the Sack destroyed the old one.”

“And you will do so, Gendry, as the royal smith, as a member of this court. You will be of this community and you will be here when Arya returns home to us. Winterfell will flourish again and you will help it do so.”

Her will is stronger than her words. He can see why she’s the Queen. She will be a good one.

 

He is at the castle often now, bringing Rickon weapons and sharing meals, occasionally joining for strategy councils. Gendry’s constantly shocked that they would want him there, but they do, even insisting on it. Sansa especially calls him to sit by her and share stories of Arya. He indulges her often, telling her all about Hot Pie and the God’s Eye, about how she called herself the Ghost of Harrenhal. He doesn’t tell anyone about Acorn Hall, keeping the memory to himself.

Sansa’s as wonderful company as she is a gracious queen. She laughs and lapses into silence at all the right cues, asking questions constantly, about Arya or the places they’ve been and sometimes questions about him, just about him, his old forge at King’s Landing, what his interests were. Sometimes he looks up from some recollection and realize her fingers are on his shoulder or her eyes are intently staring at him and he has to struggle to remember his place.

One day, feeling brash, he asks, “Why do you glower at me like that?”

She blinks, but answers, “You remind me of Lord Renly. He was always ever kind to me and you- you look like him sometimes. Has anyone ever told you that?”

“Once, long ago, a woman in armor did.”

“She was right,” Sansa muses softly.

Gendry doesn’t know if it’s a compliment or simply a statement, so he lets it pass.

He is there in the castle the day soldiers drag Roose Bolton in, forcing him to his knees before her.

At first Gendry's gaze is fixed on Roose. He had heard, of course, that Arya was married to him. His blood would boil at the thought. He knows better now that he is here, filthy, matted with dirt and dried blood. But then Gendry looks up at Sansa and he cannot look away. An intensity has taken over her features, anger and disgust, lips pulled up in a sneer and eyes hard. She has never looked more like Arya before and the thought brings an ache to his heart.

Blood of the north, he thinks.

When she speaks, her voice is strong but brittle, "Has he said anything yet about Arya or Jeyne?"

"No, your grace," the soldier to the right of Bolton says.

"Theon?"

"No, your grace."

"He will. Take all five fingers of his left hand and hang him up in the courtyard. I want all of Winterfell to see the bastard squirm in the cold."

When she says the word _bastard_ , Gendry feels a shiver run up the length of his spine.

 

A fortnight later, there is a feast. He's told it was Lord Rickon's idea. The realm needs lifting of spirits; spicy ale and a hearty meal should help. Gendry knows he will have a place at the royal staff's table as their smith.

When he gets there, the throne is empty and the hall is full, but Rickon stands at the entrance greeting citizens.

He claps Gendry on the back and, as always, Gendry's incredibly intimidated by the man. He stands a head taller, lean and slim, but when he smiles his teeth are too sharp and his lips are too red. The rumors of Skagos follow him like a shadow and it seems the youngest wolf thrives under that darkness.

"It's nice to see you, Gendry," Rickon tells him.

"How's the Queen?" Gendry's friendship is well enough with the two of them to ask frankly.

Rickon leans in and murmurs, "Not good. Jeyne and she were close and Sansa suspects Bolton's silence means she's dead, especially since Theon's still missing. No sign of Arya at all. She was never there, it seems, vanished into the woods long before Jeyne was forced to wed Bolton."

Gendry nods sympathetically, desperate for any news of Arya, and heads to his seat. There is frenzied excitement in the air of the hall where drinks are already being served. A fire roars at the wall. He takes a mug of ale and nurses it half-heartedly, making small conversation with other members of the royal court.

He looks up when a sudden quiet surrounds him. Queen Sansa has entered. She's stunning in her sea blue gown sewn with pearls and hair falling in fiery curls over alabaster skin, held back only with an intricate crown. A hush falls over the people, waiting for her to speak.

"Citizens of Winterfell," she calls out over their heads. "I stand before you tonight, humble but unbent, to tell you this long winter shall not get the best of us. There has been heartache in our past and sometimes we think it is unending. But as surely as we've endured before, we'll endure now. What is the long season compared to the ice we harbor in our veins and fire stoked in our bellies? We are not a people who give up! We are a people who survive! We fight!"

Somewhere near the back of the hall, someone slams their mug to the table, the action repeated by others until the air is filled with the sound of wood smacking, including Lord Rickon, accenting the Queen's speech. Her eyes sparkle and her cheeks turn rosy with each yell.

"We've survived war!" _SLAM_. "We've survived ruin!" _SLAM_. "And starvation!" _SLAM_. "We will stand tall!" _SLAM_ “We will wield weapons!” _SLAM._ "We will LIVE!"

The hall erupts into cheers, Gendry among them, shouting and banging both hands on the bench. She certainly knows how to rile up a crowd. The Queen takes her throne with a serene smile and Gendry pities the idiot who rouses her ire.

 

The food is good, rich and flavorful, and Gendry digs in unashamed. He knows the cooks would have tunneled into winter reserves for this feast. But he can't remember the last time he's seen this many carefree faces sitting loyal under a single ruler. Rickon was wise to organize the event.

Even though the food captures Gendry's attention, he still notices when Sansa rises halfway through her meal and leaves from a side entrance. He shovels in a last mouthful and abandons his own platter. He knows it won't be there when he returns.

If he returns.

Gendry slips through the large gates of the hall and instantly the cool air strikes him. He shivers, briefly considers if losing the warmth is worth it, then goes on. She isn't in any of the chambers on the bottom floor, nor have any of the serving girls or lads seen her. Gendry takes the steps two at a time and debates checking the chambers here. Instead, he keeps going up and up, past the empty guard towers and royal chambers, until he encounters the door for the tall towers. He pushes open the thick wooden door into swirling snow.

She's there.

The hem of her gown rises and falls around her ankles, standing with her back straight into the howling wind and shivering delicately, but her jaw is set and her eyes are wide open. She turns to him when he lets the door fall shut.

"M'lady," he scrambles to her, takes off his furs and wraps them around the Queen. She accepts them and only then does he realize she has tears down her cheeks, leaving streaks in her rouge. He stares at her dumbstruck. He has never seen her cry, always the very portrait of a composed vengeful angel, but here she is, tip of her nose red and lips trembling.

She laughs then suddenly, sending a fresh cascade of tears from her eyes. "You look cold, Gendry. Here," she holds her arms open.

He is shuddering within seconds of giving her the furs, unsure how she had managed to stand there for so long without protection from the pins driving into him.

She is a wolf. He's just a bull. 

He gladly takes the invitation and joins her under them, pressing close in, and asks in a hoarse voice, "Have you been crying, m'lady?"

"Very perceptive," she says and manages to draw a weak smile that wavers almost immediately. "I fear for Arya," she admits.

"Arya's very sharp. I wouldn't worry for her so quickly."

Sansa bites her lip. "You don't worry for her?"

"Of course I do."

"You knew her for how long?"

"Just a few months, m'lady."

"I knew her since she was born. Mother used to let me rock Arya to sleep when I was a child. I was too old by the time Bran and Rickon were born, but not with her. I would braid her hair when she was still crawling around and not yet stubborn enough to undo them," Sansa breathes out a small sigh. "How do I not worry? Haven't I buried enough family and friends already?"

“Not Arya. Arya’s more than others; I suspect you know as much, m’lady.”

“Why do you call me _m’lady_? I’m a queen. You should, by all rights, call me _your grace_ ,” she peers up at him quizzically.

He blushes furiously, “M-la- Your g-grace, I used to call Arya that.”

“And she let you?” Now Sansa looks amused. Amused is good. Amused is better than mourning.

“No, she used to shove me and curse at me.”

Sansa grins. “Sounds just like her,” she murmurs, gazing off the parapets at Winterfell. There must be an art to looking simultaneously heartbroken and still resolute. She looks that way now.

When she turns back to face him, he becomes suddenly very aware of their proximity. Her warm breath grazes his skin, her cheeks are flushed. She is lovely, the Queen of the North, Arya’s sister, pressing against him.

“Your grace,” Gendry begins, but she holds a finger to his lips.

“You can call me m’lady,” she whispers. “I like it better.”

Then her finger is gone, replaced by her lips crashing into his, and it’s an electric current running through his body. Even as he kisses her back, Gendry’s torn between desire and reluctance. Sansa’s beautiful and he would be a very stupid man to stop himself from submitting to the queen- but he would be even stupider to continue this.

His thoughts muddle when her hands come to grab his collar and pull him closer, one arm snaking to the back of his neck until he feels fingers run through his hair. They come up for air sooner than either one wants to, breathing ragged, suddenly self-conscious under the thick veil of furs.

Sansa leans up again, her nose nudging his chin in an effort to get him to look down. He stares at the door instead and mumbles, “We shouldn’t.”

“Would you deny me this small pleasure in a world of hurt?” She doesn’t sound hurt now, she sounds imposing where she had been pliant only seconds earlier.

“M’lady, what about Arya?”

She cocks her head to the side. “I hadn’t realized you both were intimate.”

“We weren’t,” he says, finding it difficult to explain the nature of their relationship. She wasn’t a lover, she was… a promise. They had both barely been anything more than children; he wasn’t sure when he started regarding as a dream. He tries to summon her face but fails, only seeing anger and rage and gray eyes. He realizes abruptly that all these years, he was in love with a shadow that had never shown him the same affection he granted her. Who knew if she was even alive?

He swallows back a lump and looks down at Sansa when she says, “Gendry? I’ll understand if you’re waiting for her.”

“I’m not sure I am,” he says the words out loud at last, slipping out with his visible breath. “I don’t think I am. I think I was waiting for someone, anyone, to come along and want me. And in the absence of any actual person, I… I imagined perhaps Arya would want me.”

“I want you,” Sansa says, her eyes dark with a longing that tugs at Gendry’s core. He covers her small pink mouth with his own in a reckless decision, tasting wine on her tongue.

When Sansa pulls back, he thinks she’s doing the sensible thing and rejecting his advance. Instead, in a husky voice, she says, “Come to my chambers later, when the castle falls asleep.”

As swiftly as she had kissed him, she slips out from under his furs and goes back to the wooden doors. She turns back to look at him only once before she disappears, leaving Gendry alone in the cold needing to be touched.

 

When Gendry tip toes up the steps to her chambers, he finds her holding the doors open, awaiting his arrival. Perhaps he isn’t the only one nervous. She draws him in and closes the door behind her in jerky movements, fumbling at the latch until it holds. She backs away from the door as if expecting it to crash open instantly.

It doesn’t.

Sansa faces Gendry finally. The crown is gone from her head, the rouge from her cheeks, the smile from her lips. “You came.”

“You sound surprised. Did you think I wouldn’t?”

“I don’t know what to think at all,” she confesses, hands worrying the hem of the cloak on her shoulders. “I’ve never been so bold before to… to ask any man to my chambers.”

“Of course not, m’lady,” he mumbles in understanding, looking past her at the embers simmering in her fireplace, reminding him of the forge.

“I’m anxious as well,” she continues, “I’ve not done this before.”

Gendry stares at her. “Surely you don’t mean-”

“I do,” she says firmly. “And I’m not ashamed of it either. My first betrothal to Joffrey… everyone knows how that ended. And then my marriage with Tyrion was never consummated. All the time I spent at the Vale with Harrold, I spent under Littlefinger’s watchful eye. And now I’m finally back home, too busy rebuilding Winterfell to be concerned with small matters.”

“M’lady, I could never, not with the Queen,” he stammers uneasily, never imagining this conversation, everything he has learnt scolding him for even considering bedding Sansa.

“Why?”

“You’re the Queen!” he snaps.

“Ah, thank you so much for letting me know. I’d quite forgotten,” she retorts, and her eyes flash in a way that reminds him of her sister. “Is it because I’m inexperienced at this?”

“Of course not, m’lady. I suspect you might know more than I do, but that isn’t the point.”

“Pray tell, what _is_ the point?”

“You’re a Stark and I’m just a bastard.”

Sansa’s lips press together in a line. “You’re a bastard?”

“Yes, and I’m not ashamed of it either,” he echoes back her words bitterly.

“I wouldn’t expect you to be and I don’t expect it to matter. I have met more noblemen who would sooner see me skinned than I have farmers willing to give a poor girl a helping hand. Status and names, they fade away when you’re alone.” She’s quiet for a moment, mulling it over. Then she asks, “What did you mean when you said I might know more than you?”

Gendry shrugs, “I’ve never been with a woman.” He doesn’t tell her the irrational idea that he had always thought his first time would be with Arya.

He had never imagined it would be her sister.

They both stare at each other. At last, Sansa drops her cloak in one fluid motion and, in a thin shift of gauzy lace, walks to her bed. She draws her knees up and says through auburn eyelashes, “I want you to come to bed with me, Gendry. I don’t care about the past and I don’t care about the future.”

 _The Queen wants me to take her maidenhead; the Queen is seducing me_.

Gendry can feel some kind of beast rearing its head inside him, beating against his chest, and he approaches her on unsteady legs. He sits beside her on the mattress.

They don’t touch, not at first, regarding each other as strangers. She unfolds her long legs and they go back to being shy, thighs barely touching. A _pop_ from the fireplace makes them both flinch, turning to the door. Together, they let out their held breaths and for the first time that night, Sansa smiles.

She’s gorgeous. Gendry makes the first move this time, lightly touching her plump lower lip with a thumb, like a very small self-contained map on the pale expanse of her skin. He lowers his face and she angles up, closing the distance.

There aren’t any options in that kiss, it’s a simple thing. Sansa knows what she wants, rising on her knees to reach his height, and her fingers are at the laces of his tunic before he can think, baring his skin to the slightly chilled air. He finds his own hands at the clasp of her shift, giving him more trouble than he had thought possible for a tiny piece of metal encased in fabric.

When he hears the cloth tear under his large clumsy fingers, he leans back, shocked. Sansa only laughs and pulls the clinging material off her shoulders without a second thought and pushing him back roughly. He isn’t sure which amazes him more, her breasts falling free of the shift or the way she climbs atop him to keep him on his back. He gapes at her stupidly, the pressure of her hips bringing blood to his cock so the sensation borders on the edge of painful.

Sansa bends over him, teeth grazing over his collar bones and worrying at his throat, and he bucks upward to be released, his hands wandering up the smooth skin of her stomach, climbing up each rib. She grinds down on his thighs, swaying above him with her red locks shining in the firelight. Gendry reaches up to kiss her again, sitting up and taking a rosy nipple between his fingers, already hard. She gasps audibly and this time he lays her back on the sheets and she lets him, his knees splayed on either side of her thighs.

He hesitates at her entrance, calloused hands skimming over her navel and down red curls to the wetness between her legs. Sansa’s intense blue eyes seem to glint and she whispers, “Here, like this,” and guides his fingers to the bud of her sex, moving them in small tight circles. He catches the rhythm soon and Sansa moans under him, soft and breathy and heaving breasts, and within a few seconds, her body trembles and she comes with a groan.

Gendry falters, shifts his weight off her.

“What are you…” she trails off to catch her breath and continues, “What are you doing?”

“M’lady, your pleasure has been reached.”

She sits up and kisses him hard, grabbing his cock through his trousers and he inhales sharply. “And yours?”

The feel of her fingers, even through the cloth, is maddening.

“I can’t,” he tells her, circling her wrist.

“You can and you will,” she commands, and there is an edge in her voice, “and if you must think of it as an order, you will do so. But you will not leave these chambers unsatisfied.”

Gendry stares at her helpless. There is so much about this young Queen he does not know, but he knows this much: she will get her way and he will be more than happy to oblige her. “I believe watching Your Grace was enough satisfaction for a foolish smith,” he tells her quietly.

She rumbles a strange sound in her throat and says in a slow threatening drawl, “You are to call me m’lady, understood?”

What was it with these Stark sisters? One insisted on being anything but _lady_ and the other demanded to be called nothing but _lady_. He nearly says as much out loud until she licks her lips and her eyes flick down to his trousers.

Gendry’s arousal gets the best of him. With a growl of his own, he pushes Sansa back and watches her red hair spread on the pillow like a halo. He lowers his breeches and her nails are razors on his back, clutching him closer. He positions himself at her entrance and slowly moves his hips forward. Gendry watches Sansa’s face closely for any signs of pain, but other than a small wince, she makes no other indication of discomfort. When he moves, her mouth falls open, teeth gripping her lower lip. He wants to go slow, slower than this anyway, but with a thrust, she meets him halfway, her pace ever increasing until he calls her name and shatters above her and she follows him into oblivion.

Afterwards, he falls asleep beside her, watching her chest rise and fall with each steady breath. She wakes him before dawn in a frenzy, frantic to have him out of her chambers before her handmaiden came in for morning duties, and he sneaks out of the castle into the frigid air of Winterfell.

 

That was the first time.

There are many more times after that until Gendry loses count, knowing only her silken skin and touch, the small noises she makes just before she comes, the intimate glances she shares with him in a crowded hall and the way she licks her lips makes him stiff so he has to excuse himself from the council.

Months ago, he would have thought Arya was the only one he could ever love, even though she was gone and he hadn’t seen her years. He had dreamed of her touch for years, of a vague girl with untamed brown hair, pushing him against a wall, straddling him, pushing her tongue into his mouth. He had gotten himself off more nights than he could think of at her thought.

But now Sansa’s the only image flashing before his eyes when he closes them.

When had that happened? And where was he when it did?

 _In her bed, oblivious to the world,_ a voice inside snaps and he has to struggle to inhale. That night, when he creeps into Sansa’s room as she waits for him, his guilt ebbs and for once, he doesn’t make any excuses when he makes love to her.  


	2. Betrayal

He knows something is wrong that day when he enters the council room. Rickon, Sansa, and Osha are huddled over a small scroll of parchment, their heads bent low together. For a moment, Gendry feels like an intruder, an outsider from King’s Landing who doesn’t belong here with northerners- within their family. Then Rickon looks up and sees Gendry, beckoning  him over with a wave of his hand.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, struggling to read the scroll between Osha’s fingers.

“It’s from Jon. There have been killings all over Westeros,” Sansa says, looking up, bewildered.

“Killings?” Gendry laughs. “Is this meant to be news?”

“Very particular killings,” Rickon murmurs. “ _Difficult_ killings.”

“From King’s Landing,” Osha reads out loud, “Prisoner Cersei Lannister in the dungeons, her tongue ripped out and a stab wound through her heart. Justice Ilyn Payne in his living quarters, both hands chopped off and a stab wound through his heart. Former Kingsguard Meryn Trent in the dungeons, kneecaps smashed and a stab wound through his heart. From the Twins, Prisoner Walder Frey in a guarded tower, eyes gouged out and a stab wound through his heart. From the Dreadfort, Prisoner Roose Bolton in the torture dungeon, skin f-flayed and a stab wound through his heart.”

She stops then to cough, after her uncharacteristic stammer that has Rickon at her side in a flash, his hand rubbing up her back gently, asking “Are you okay?”

“I’m getting too old for this,” she throws the scroll carelessly on the table.

Gendry stands still, all of the names on the scroll repeating back to him, names he has heard before, strung together like beads and chanted like a prayer.

“Gendry?” Sansa’s voice is sharp, cutting through his haze. “What is it?”

He mumbles unintelligibly.

“Speak up, boy,” Osha snaps brusquely.

He clears his throat and looks Sansa straight in the eye. “Arya. Arya’s list. She swore, back on the King’s Road, that she would kill every single one of them.” He feels a smile tugging at his lips that he would’ve set free if his chest didn’t suddenly ache. “And she did.”

His audience stands in stunned silence.

Osha is the first to speak. “You’re sure?”

“She had a little sword, it was a sharp thing, very well made. She always wore it ‘round her hip. I’ve mentioned it before. She called it Needle,” Gendry finds his eyes filling up with tears as he remembers her face at last, suddenly in focus. He can see her thin lips and dark circles, the way she slouched when she walked with a masculine gait, how she tried to smooth the short staccato curls sticking up from her head when she woke in the morning. And her voice, oh her voice is echoing in his ears, chanting her prayer.

_It’s not a prayer anymore,_ he thinks. _We pray to the gods to help us. Arya helped herself._

“And these names, she said them all?” Rickon asks anxiously, hands gripping the edge of the table tightly. Gendry knows how he must feel. The stirring of hope has awakened in Gendry’s own belly as well.

“Not the Freys, no. But I wouldn’t be surprised if she had added them after what happened at the Twins.”

_After I left her._

A current of pride for Arya ripples through him, followed by another of shame for himself. When he looks up, he finds Sansa’s moist eyes cast to the ground, her hands clasped in Rickon’s, Osha embracing them as whatever mother she has managed to be to these abandoned orphan pups.

Again, Gendry becomes aware of the feeling that he is witnessing something he doesn’t understand; something he doesn’t deserve to be a part of.

For a moment, he is hurt. He’s never had a family, no one to cry when he went missing, no one to worry over what he did or where he went. Yet here he is, standing in Winterfell, safe and warm. And Arya, with brothers and a sister, with an army willing to follow her name, she is the one flung into the world with no protection.

Refusing to further interfere, Gendry turns and quietly slips from the council room. If they notice, they don’t stop him.

 

Sweat pours from Gendry’s body, soot coating every exposed inch of his skin. His hands are slick with the sticky heat of the forge as he grips his hammer tight. With every beat of metal against steel, he thinks of her. He dares not let himself harbor false hope but he _knows_ with every fiber of his being that it is she, working her way down that list with a sword in her hand and vengeance in her heart.

_CLANG._ ARYA. _CLANG._ ARYA. _CLANG._ ARYA.

He had searched for her in the woods when he traveled with the Brotherhood. _He had thought he was mad._ He had asked every passing visitor at the inn _._   _He had thought he dreamt her up in some intoxicated night._ He had paid sailors and soldiers alike with meals and clean beds and sharp swords for any information on a skinny brown haired lad with gray eyes _._

He thinks of all the things he wants to say to her, everything that’s been building inside his mind for years.

_I missed you. I’m so sorry I didn’t come after you and promise to be in your pack for as long as both of us breathe- I was just a stupid bull-headed bastard. I shouldn’t have joined the Brotherhood if it meant leaving you. We could have journeyed the long miles to Winterfell, hungry and exhausted, but alive, together. I want to be with you._

_I’m fucking your sister._

The last one catches him unawares and the hammer finally spirals out of Gendry’s sweaty palms, crashing down with a thunderous roar and just barely missing his foot. He stares angrily at the ashy floor. No matter how much he scrubbed the stone, he could not get the fire-licked stains out. He can only stare for so long before his fury gets the best of him and he slams the flat of his hand against a wooden wall as hard as he can, a shock of pain reaching through him.

“You’re going to hurt yourself,” the Queen’s voice admonishes.

He looks up, surprised. Sansa’s collected her robes in one hand to keep the bottom from sweeping in the dust and she’s collected her wits from this morning’s revelation. Her back is straight, chin up, looking incredibly out of place in the smithy.

“How long have you been standing there?”

“Long enough to know you shouldn’t be in here alone,” she murmurs gently.

And for a moment, it angers him, how she can stand there and look so composed while he’s unraveling on the inside. He rushes forward and press his lips to her, fierce. She pulls back and gives a little shake of her head, red ringlets swaying. Then his anger dissolves into something more basic and he feels a pricking at the base of his eyes again. He swipes viciously, realizes he’s only smearing soot all over his face, and let’s his hands drop to his side uselessly.

Before he realizes it, Sansa is wrapping her long arms around him, and he lets himself go in her hold, utterly lost. She doesn’t care that he’s getting filth on her gown, and he doesn’t care that someone will walk in on them.

“She’s coming home,” Sansa says, and there is none of the uncertainty Gendry feels in her voice, only joy, only relief. He feels it reverberate through her chest and into his core. “My sister’s coming home.”

 

They hear the howl first, loud and piercing, splitting the very air in two with its magnitude. It’s joined almost instantly by another howl, the sounds unmistakable, the baying of wolves.

Inside the castle in the long dining hall, Rickon jerks up from his seat, Osha at his heels. “Shaggydog,” he cries.

“Nymeria,” Sansa’s voice mirrors the breathless anticipation her brother had spoken with.

Forgetting the company of the royal staff around them, the Starks, Osha, and Gendry abandon their meals and leap for the gates, being pulled open with agonizing slowness by a squire. Sansa leads all of them as they leave the castle into freezing night air. Gendry finds himself shivering, but none of the others react to the temperature, long strides and frantic gazes to find the direwolves and the Stark who undoubtedly followed them here.

It is in the courtyard when they see the shadow stalking toward them, less human and more… feral, spine bowed and hands in tight fists. Gendry nearly recoils at the sight of her, but Sansa runs forward, forgetting that she was Queen and remembering only that once, long ago, she had been sister to a wild little girl who was now a wild grown woman.

Much behind her, beasts larger than horses growl and circle each other. In the dim moonlight of a waning moon, he can make out only the sharp slants of  eyebrows on a long face, cheekbones like cliffs, and the curve of her lips, shaggy hair, still wearing the clothes of men, Needle hanging off her hip.

_Arya._

When her sister draws Arya into her embrace, she doesn’t react. She stands rigidly, as if uncertain what to do with herself, eyes flicking about the courtyard without settling, as if keeping her gaze out for unseen danger. Rickon reaches her next, throwing his arms around her waist. He’s no longer a Lord, no longer a nobleman; he’s just a lost boy clutching his family, tears seeping down his cheeks.

Gendry stares, muscles incapable of movement.

She isn’t alone, Gendry realizes a moment later, when her siblings give her room to breathe. Behind her is a dark skinned, dark haired young man.

Sansa notices him first. One hand still around Arya’s shoulders, she turns to him and raises an eyebrow.

“Trystane Martell,” he introduces himself.

Sansa, ever the courteous, bows slightly and gives him her hand to kiss. “Lord Trystane, how I wish we had met under better circumstances. Queen of the North, Sansa. I imagine you have a good reason to accompany my sister to Winterfell?” and the way she says it, Gendry can tell, is both a threat and a reconciliation.

“Jon Snow sent me with her. She- Lady Arya- doesn’t speak much.”

“Jon knows about Arya?” There is an accusation in Sansa’s words and she pulls Arya closer in protection.

Trystane shifts his feet nervously. Gendry can see a sheathed sword and chain mail under the Dornishman’s clothes. “He sent your grace a crow. Did we arrive before the bird?”

“Sansa?” Their conversation is interrupted by a tiny hesitant voice, nearly lost among the other voices in the cold night. Then, louder, “Rickon?”

Nymeria howls.

The Stark siblings are as surprised as Trystane is. Sansa turns her back to Trystane and takes Arya into both of her arms once more.

“We’re here, me and Rickon.”

“Bran?”

Rickon’s voice is heavy when he shakes his head and says, “We buried him in the crypts.”

A strangled sob escapes Arya’s lips, seizing the back of Sansa’s dress with her small hands.

Her sister soothes Arya with her murmur, “You’re home now, sister. You’re in Winterfell, where you belong, where we all belong.”

_I do not belong here,_ Gendry thinks.

 

By the time the Starks have all headed inside, trailed by their wolves and Osha, a crowd of northerners has gathered in the courtyard. Their faces hold fear, fascination and curiosity mingling with dread that nothing good ever comes of unexpected encounters.

Gendry had tried to catch Sansa’s gaze, but the Queen only had eyes for her sister. He walks back with Trystane, both men quiet until Trystane says, “I haven’t had the pleasure of making your acquaintance yet, ser.”

“I’m the royal smith, Gendry.”

Trystane’s eyebrows shoot up in awe. “Gendry Waters, the blacksmith? The Baratheon Bastard?”

It takes Gendry’s throat a few seconds to speak, choking out, “The _what?_ ”

“You’re Gendry Waters? King’s Landing has been going mad looking for Robert’s heir. They all think you’re dead. Mya Sto- err, Baratheon has been sitting in your seat for years.”

“The what?” Gendry repeats stupidly.

“You don’t know?”

“Know what?” he snaps.

“You’re Robert’s bastard. After Cersei’s children were exposed as Lannisters, the search for all the Baratheon Bastards began and each was legitimized by Queen Daenerys. Her grace did not want to reward the Usurper's children, but Prince Jon and Mya convinced her otherwise. As the eldest son of a former King, you have a seat on the council that’s being covered by Mya in your absence.”

“I’m Robert Baratheon’s son?” Gendry cannot keep disbelief from his tone.

Trystane sighs tiredly, “Yes, my lord.”

“I’m a Lord?”

“Once you get your decree from the Queen in the South, yes.”

Gendry wants to scream or fight or maybe curl up on the dirt and cry, all because he suddenly knows the answer to a question he had never dared ask, had forced himself not to care about. So this is who his father is, an old drunkard, a foolish fat stag, an idle king. He had seen him countless times before, making speeches and eating lavish feasts, dark hair growing gray at the temples, the golden queen at his side with a litter of blonde Lannister kids.

He wishes he found out much sooner.

He wishes he never found out at all.

 

She sups like a wild animal, tearing meat with her teeth, hands covered in grease, long slurps from her wine glass, as though she’s been starving for eons. Every few seconds, she looks up from her meal at Sansa, at Rickon, at the empty throne. In the firelight flickering in the throne room, Gendry can see Arya better now, the way sharp nails dig into the bread to tear it, how her small mouth parts and the rim of the glass rests on her lower chapped lip, long tongue lapping at ale.

Queen Sansa regards her silently with a cool demeanor, completely at odds with the storm roaring inside Gendry- at both Arya’s reappearance and the information of his lineage.

When Rickon’s head slumps to the table, nearly striking the dark wood, Osha guides him away from the table, saying, “To bed now, young prince. She will still be here when you awake.”

Arya’s eyes follow him out of the chambers.

Soon after, Trystane stands and starts, “I’ll get a room at the inn-”

“Nonsense. You’re an esteemed Lord and you’ll sleep in the castle’s guest rooms. I apologize, most of the staff has retired for the night, but the serving boy will help you find everything you need.”

Winterfell is, after all, still recovering itself slowly.

After Trystane’s departure, only the three of them remain, Arya still feeding noisily, Sansa still staring, Gendry still lost and morose in his thoughts. He waits for Sansa to dismiss him, determined not to leave until she does and Arya is forced to notice him. The dismissal never comes. He thinks maybe later, he’ll get a chance to talk to Sansa about his parentage or Arya’s return.

Instead, once Arya is done eating, she wipes her hands on the cloth beside her plate and stands with enough force to topple her heavy oak chair to the floor. She takes quick long strides to stand before him, the sword clanging against the metal of her worn armor. Sansa’s watches impassively, her blue eyes giving away nothing, a mask firmly in place.

She reaches out and touches his chin incredibly lightly, like the silk of a spider’s web, and traces the contours of Gendry’s face. The tips of her fingers trail over the ridge of his nose and at the lines creasing his forehead, rummaging at the wrinkles in the corners of his eyelids. Finally, she steps back and, with an air of doubt, asks, “Gendry?”

A grin spreads over his lips unwillingly. She remembers.

He nods eagerly. “Arya,” he breathes.

Her brow furrows and her jaw clenches. Her eyes only meet his for a second, but what he sees frightens him. It’s a darkness, not Rickon’s contained dark or Sansa’s unforgiving dark, but a black pure and unfiltered, terrifying, unbelonging in her expression yet completely at home.

She turns and stalks away from him purposefully. As she passes by Sansa, the Queen stands and follows Arya out of the chambers without so much as a glance his way.

 

Gendry wanders through the cobbled roads of Winterfell in his furs, hugging them close. He passes by Nymeria and Shaggydog curled up against the gates of the palace entrance, huge beasts in deep slumber. The night is clear, stars glinting pinpoints of light. He finds himself at the godswood before long, seeking solace in the twisted branches overhead and the thick aroma of pine and dirt. He finds one of the bubbling pools and sits in the wafting steam with his back to the trunk of a weirwood.

He doesn’t know how long he’s been sitting there, until his ass is freezing and he can’t feel the tip of his nose or ears. But when he gets to his feet and happens to glance upward, he nearly falls back on his bottom.

Dark eyes peer back at him from the naked branches. Gendry blinks and makes out her slim form perched on the trunk of the weirwood, as natural as any pheasant, wearing nothing but breeches and a tunic that hangs off her bones several sizes too large. Sansa’s tunic and Rickon’s breeches, he recognizes.

“Arya, what’re you doing here?”

“Sansa sleeps with silks and pillows as fit for a Queen. Sansa dreams of knights and treaties as fit for a Lady,” she talks with a slight accent, not Westerosi. Somewhere from across the Narrow Sea.

“You’re not cold?”

“What is cold?” she shrugs, even as her breath is visible in the air. “Is it something I feel in the heart? Is it something I feel on the flesh?” She leaps from the branches and lands on both feet before him, balanced and stable, standing as tall as him. “Is cold something _you_ feel?”

“Yes,” he stumbles back, unaccustomed to her intruding presence.

“Will cold help me?” she covers the space between them again and Gendry’s body reacts instinctively, moving in to the unrelenting heat of her figure.

“No.”

“Then why should I feel it?”

He doesn’t understand her, not the way she speaks and not the way she lingers in his space, not her confusing questions and certainly not her bewitching gaze. How had Trystane said she doesn't speak much when she spoke far _too_ much for him to even make meaning of? “Arya, what happened to you?”

Her nostrils flare and she inhales deeply. “Do I confuse you?”

Gendry jerks back. Can she smell his sentiments? “I just want to know if you remember me.”

“I remember a foolish boy in the helm of a bull, taking oaths he did not understand with a people fighting for a cause they did not understand.”

“The Brotherhood,” he tells her, “fought for the God of Light.”

She laughs something shrill that pierces his ears, humorless. “There is only one god, and that god did not help defeat the Other. Dragons did. Obsidian did.”

“You finished your list, I see.”

Arya nods, “There will be a new one. The world has no lack of names.”

“Where were you all these years?” he whispers abruptly, leaning down so when he speaks, it is her air he has to suck into his lungs. “We looked for you, Arya. _I_ looked for you.”

“Arya did not exist all those years you looked.”

He searches her face for anything he might understand, but her eyes are foreign planets and her teeth are glistening fangs. The pool beside them bubbles and babbles.

“I missed you when you did not exist.”

“I think I missed me, too.”

He kisses her then, chapped lips and foreign fangs and Essosi tongue, and she tastes like something he cannot place, like she is the bark of the woods or the stars in the sky. Her tongue whispers into his mouth and her teeth bite into his lip. He shivers through the touch, like the Stranger has kissed him.

Gendry doesn’t think, not one bit, about titles or names or queens with red hair, not when she was writhing beneath him like a wraith.

She groans and his hands are at her back, pulling her up so her bare rough feet no longer touch down, wrapped around his waist, arms curling behind his shoulders until the furs fall to the ground. She weighs nothing, no burden at all beneath his touch, even though he can feel the curve of her breast in his palm and his other hand digging into her ass, he can feel her hips grinding into his hard cock.

He steps forward and slams her back against the wood, jarring their teeth at the impact. She doesn’t break the contact between them, even as she struggles to unfasten his trousers in the freezing air and he pulls her shirt up over her neck, moist lips free for a moment so his lungs greedily suck in fresh air, until the hungry pinkness comes crashing back into him.

Arya’s wet around his cock when he pushes in, neck thrown back so he can see a stream of blue veins in the skinny sliver of moon. He drags his tongue down the blue and gnaws at her clavicle and tastes shards of ice. They have no pace, just erratic jerky thrusts coupled with a growing fervent craving.

She comes first, with a high breathy whimper, incoherent though her mouth forms syllables he doesn’t comprehend, not that his mind can focus on anything other than her frantic pull and hooded steel gray eyes until he loses control.

And he thinks, _all those years, I was right; she does want me._

 

Sansa’s skin was sweet with perfumes and lemon cakes; Arya’s is salty, with tears and sweat and the metallic scent of blood hanging off her skin.

And yet it all tastes the same to him, of desire and yearning and the faint distant hint of defeat.

 

Gendry doesn’t see her again the next day, neither does he see Sansa or Rickon, and the castle doors are always shut when he knocks, a squire telling him that the Starks wanted to be undisturbed. He’s glad for it. He needs time to deal with the sudden chaos his life is immersed in. Beating on glowing metal with his hammer in the thick smoke of the forge is just the right thing to dull his senses.

Trystane Martell comes to him the second day with a brief letter in Sansa’s long graceful writing, sealed with the wolf of House Stark.

_Lord Martell told me of Robert Baratheon and your relationship to him. It is your choice to accept Queen Daenerys’ offer of legitimization and return to King’s Landing or stay on at Winterfell after your status has been granted._

_We shall meet each other again soon to talk of pressing matters._

_Queen and Protector of the North, Warden of Winterfell_

_Sansa Stark._

He burns the letter in his hearth and becomes aware of Trystane watching him.

Gendry drops the last scrap of paper and asks, “Did you spend much time with Arya?”

“Just the week or so it took us to ride from King’s Landing to here.”

“Week or so? On the King’s Road?” He tries not to sound impressed.

Trystane’s dark eyes dance in the flickering fire. “Lady Arya rides very fast.”

Gendry doesn’t like the man’s tone, as though he knows some intimate secret about Arya that Gendry isn’t privy to. “How is King’s Landing?”

“I haven’t actually seen much of the city. I only came with my wife from Dorne a fortnight ago because she was ill and wanted to return home.”

“Your wife?”

“Myrcella Bar- Myrcella Lannister.”

_Myrcella._ Maybe in another life, she would have been his half-sister, with black hair instead of blonde and prancing fury in her blood instead of roaring gold.

“When will you return?”

“That depends on Queen Sansa’s answer.”

“Answer? To what?” It seems all Gendry can do these days is feel lost in emotion and ask questions of things he doesn’t know.  _Pressing matters,_ he thinks back to the words Sansa wrote in the letter. Perhaps the answer to some pressing matter, then.

Trystane stares down at his feet. “Perhaps it isn’t my place to talk of the private matters of nobility.”

“I’m a Baratheon now. I’m nobility,” Gendry says the words out loud, feeling out of place. Another thing he felt a lot these days.

With a sigh, Trystane divulges, “Prince Jon Targaryen sent Queen Sansa a proposal for her hand in marriage.”

Rage races through Gendry even before the man finishes speaking, a blinding hot red veil dropping over his vision. “She won’t,” he responds gruffly. “She can’t.”

“Why not?” Trystane is studying him carefully and Gendry struggles to keep himself in check. “It’s a good match, even if they are cousins. Prince Jon is well liked by the people and their betrothal would ensure peace between the two kingdoms. Not to mention Queen Daenerys is anxious to see her nephew settle and have heirs before the long winter is over.”

Gendry forms fists under his bench at the thought of Sansa under Jon's touch, and he says, “She would not change from a Stark to a Targaryen, not after she has finally reclaimed the name.”

“Ridiculous. She will say yes. Did you think the Queen would remain a maiden forever?” He asks quietly.

It takes all of his willpower for Gendry not to smash the Dornishman’s head in with his hammer.

 

That night, long after the letter has been burned to a crisp and Trystane gone from the smithy, Arya comes to him as silent as a ghost and as quick as a drop of rain, snow melting in her frizzy hair. She presses her lips to him and straddles him on his straw mattress.

Sansa and he had made love; Arya and he fuck.

And he loves every minute of it, unashamed. Afterwards, his tongue pressed flat against her clit, two fingers bent to the knuckle in her heat, he drives her to the edge again until he is ready once more. This time, he moves inside her slowly.

“You are not inexperienced at this,” she tells him, high and breathy, and her accent once again feels bizarre to his ears.

“Neither are you.”

She allows a small smile on her lips. “I didn’t think either of us would be fumbling and inept when we got here.”

Gendry stills mid-stroke. “Did you know always, that we would end up here?”

“Here, with your cock buried in my cunt?” This time, she grins openly up at him, wolfish teeth and ripe tongue, and he can still see a glimpse of that darkness he saw the first night. “I believe when we are in the wombs, perhaps just quickening, a story is written somewhere, carved down into stone- with painstaking deliberation and consideration, of two souls. The story flickers between tragedy and drama, or perhaps it’s a comedy to the writers, but there is only way it can end. And it does, and it never misses a beat.”

“Arya,” he snaps. He has no time for her riddles. “Just answer me! Did you know?”

She smirks and whispers against his flushed skin, “I knew, always. If there are seven hells, I reckon I’ve been through at least five of them, and I knew as I made my way through each and every single one, that I would end up here. Even before you were this soon to be Lord, even before you had your own forge and were part of Winterfell’s royal staff. I knew back when you were still a stubborn bull, my stubborn bull, _my Gendry_.”

His Arya had been innocent- or at least she had not been guilty. Now, with spatters of blood across all of her clothes and lust in her eyes, she is sin itself.

But she is still _his Arya._

The next day, he finally finds the doors of the castle open. He goes straight to Sansa’s chambers, where that long constant quill is in her hands and her back is tall to the door.

“You can’t say yes.”

Sansa twists in her seat and looks up at him, her pale face untroubled. “Ser Gendry? I’m sorry, I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“Don’t play dumb with me, m’lady,” he hisses. “You can’t say yes.”

Her eyes harden. “I don’t know what you mean. If you’re talking about Jon’s proposal, I _can_ say yes and I _will_ say yes.”

Gendry takes her wrist and jerks her up off the seat. His lips on hers are desperate.

She pulls back with a gasp and her hand slips from his grip, comes down hard across his face. “How dare you? I am your Queen!”

The place where she had slapped him smarts, but not as much as his stung pride.

Sansa’s expression softens, something almost akin to an infuriating pity. “Gendry, we were both lonely. I won’t disrespect our time together, but it has run its course. It is better if we let the matter drop. I will wed Jon and he will join me on the throne of Winterfell. And you- you should be delighted. You will be a Baratheon and you will have Arya by your side.”

“What does Arya have to do with this?”

“Hasn’t she spent two nights with you already?”

He gapes at her.

“I’m not an idiot, Gendry. I know where she passes her nights and I know you want nothing more than her. I saw it when she touched your face, and when you mumbled her name in your sleep. I can understand that it’s difficult for you to get past our relationship, perhaps because we shared companionship during a very challenging time for both of us, but it is not an excuse to take advantage,” the Queen’s mask slides back into place, an ocean churning beneath the blue of her eyes. “And if you hurt my sister-”

“I could never hurt her,” Gendry’s eyes well up with tears again and he confesses, “I thought you would be the only one. I didn’t think she was ever coming back.”

Sansa places a light chaste kiss to his lips. “She did. Now it is up to you to ensure she does not leave again.”

 

Arya waits for him back at his living quarters, lying across his mattress. She looks small and vulnerable, almost like a little girl again on the King’s Road, giving them the wrong name and hiding when she bathed in the river.

“Are you just going to keep staring or touch me?”

Gendry joins her on the bed and she drapes herself over his chest.

“You’re going to be legitimized, I hear,” she snickers. “Perhaps you should make yourself a new helm, one in the shape of a stag.”

“I’m still as much of a lowborn as you are a lady.”

Arya climbed and towered over him on all fours, hair falling over his face like a curtain. “You still call me a lady, as if I don’t have blood on my flesh from prying apart rib cages and drinking from veins, as if I have not lived as an orphan and boy and beggar and whore. As if my life has been nothing but a man with his head cut off who died too soon before his time and a woman with her throat cut open who died too late after her time. You call me a lady like you know it means, like I know what it means. It is a word only.”

As always, her words make little sense, but they sound beautiful and poetic and harsh rolling off her tongue from across the Narrow Sea.

She kisses him and he kisses her, both of them breathing hard.

Arya stops unexpectedly and pulls back. She tilts her head to the side. “Why do you taste like... like her?” Her eyes widen in horror, a storm appearing on the horizon.

Gendry knows what she would have tasted on his lips. Heat rises to his face, and he stammers, “I- There’s nothing- We just-”

“No,” Arya says flatly. “Please, no. Gendry, tell me no. Tell me I’m wrong, or imagining it, or mistaken. _Please._ ”

He knows he cannot lie to her, but any other explanation refuses to rise from his throat. It is enough confirmation for her.

When she walks out of the door, he tries to call her back, but there is nothing save empty hushed peace and her footsteps. All he can think is that Sansa had asked him not to let her leave again, but he’s broken his promise within the hour.

 

As a child, very young and naïve, a bald man with soft powdered hands and a voice as smooth as a spider had come to visit him. He had asked, “Boy, would you rather apprentice under a smith or a fisherman?”

Even though Gendry had known from the start he wanted a hammer in his hands instead of a rod, he had asked petulantly, “Why do I have to choose?”

The man had chuckled a feminine sound and told him, “You can’t have them both, my friend.”

_You can’t have them both, my friend._

And now he would have neither.

 


	3. Home

The King’s Road is an echo, a painful reminder of a simpler time. He had spent so long on the rough winding path that it had nearly become a second home, after King’s Landing and before Winterfell. He remembers Hollow Hill, where he had taken an oath and become a knight. He thinks of the Crossroad Inn, where he’d stayed with the Heddles and a cluster of orphans. And of course, the time he had spent with Arya. Now he rides with her sister, both on steeds faster and stronger than anything he has been on before.

Their entourage is minimal, though trustworthy. Her Queensguard is not particularly powerful, but she has scouts in all directions, swordsmen and archers, and of course, Gendry. Even without his hammer, he has proven his worth as a warrior with a blade.

The first night, he stays with the guards and Trystane in their tent.

The second night, he wanders through the cold woods in search of weirwood trees with faces carved into them and red sap leaking from their trunks, but all he comes across is snow and the occasional frightened rabbit.

The third night, he waits until the guard’s duty shift and sneaks into Sansa’s tent. She’s running a brush through her long red hair. She must see him in her looking glass, or perhaps a queen simply knows when another presence joins her, because she turns to him as soon as he enters.

“Hello, Gendry.”

“Sansa.” He purposefully refuses to call her _my lady_ or _your grace._

“Was there something you wanted?” she asks.

Gendry swallows hard, staring at her. She looks so content. He knows Arya would not have told her sister what she had found out. And seeing her now, Gendry knows he can’t say anything either. It would utterly ruin Sansa to know she had hurt her sister, even accidentally, then left her in Winterfell to get married and bring home a husband.

“I didn’t want to be alone,” he says instead of everything else beating frantic wings in his head.

Sansa nods courteously, something formal extended in the gesture. Gendry doesn’t like the expression, preferring the Sansa who had laughed and smiled with him. “I don’t mind providing you with company,” the way she emphasizes company was the _only_ thing she would provide irks Gendry.

“I don’t want anything else,” he hastily adds. “I just didn’t want to be by myself.”

“You needed a friend.”

“Yes, a friend. And I needed to talk.”

“About?”

He takes a deep breath and confesses, “I’m thinking of staying at King’s Landing.”

Sansa’s brows draw together. She puts down her brush and purses her lips. “And why would you do that, knowing Arya is waiting for you back home?”

 _Home,_ he thinks. _King’s Landing is my home. I am going there now._

“I’m not sure that Arya will be waiting. I think… I think that she’s changed from when we both met. I think she’s not the same little girl anymore.”

“Are any of us?” Sansa asks.

Of course not. He is a nobleman now. She is a queen now. He grits his teeth, unable to find a better excuse. Gendry knows that she is no better than his loneliness. At least when he is by himself, there is only one person cursing at him and his silence does not wait for an answer he does not have.

“I cannot force you to make a decision. I can only advise you- and you already know what I will say,” Sansa’s mask is back when she says the words.

Gendry watches until the guards are distracted before leaving her tent.

Before he goes, Sansa warns him one last, “Do not break her heart, Gendry. Do not bring back the faceless girl Arya left behind in Braavos.”

He does not know what faceless means. He does not know Arya had been in Braavos.

He does not know when Sansa had begun to speak in riddles as well.

 

The Dragon Queen, with silver hair down her back and violet eyes, with Jon on one side and Aegon at the other, with some kind of ruthless fury burning under her skin, greets them when they arrive at the palace in King’s Landing. Her dragons fly lazy circles in the air, shadows passing overhead that make Jon’s direwolf growls up at them in annoyance.

The two Queens bow and shake hands, walking up to the castle together with arms clasped.

Gendry finds himself slightly surprised that she doesn’t even so much as glance his way. When he begins trailing Aegon up the pathway, Jon claps an arm on his shoulder and shakes his head.

“I wouldn’t if I were you. Give my aunt some time. She isn’t fond of the Baratheon Bastards.” Jon leads them down another path, one leading out to the cliff’s edge instead of the castle.

“I didn’t realize…”

“It’s okay. Gendry, isn’t it?”

He nods.

“We’ve all heard bits and pieces about you in the time we looked,” Jon pauses and his dark eyes study Gendry’s face. “You look like the rest of Robert’s children. Well, Mya and Edric anyway.”

“My half-siblings?” Gendry asks, inhaling the salty breeze of the beach. He had never thought he would miss the scent, mixed with the strange smoky stench of the city itself.

Jon nods and there is a somber quality on his features reminding Gendry of Arya. “Mya’s inside. Edric’s back at Storm’s End. Tell me, Gendry, why did you come?”

Why does he want to know? Doesn’t he know already? “To be legitimized,” he answers, though he knows it is only half of the truth.

“Why didn’t you ask Sansa to legitimize you when Trystane revealed your parentage?”

“It didn’t occur to me.”

Jon steps closer and his voice drops an octave, “Don’t look so nervous. I just thought you’d want to stay with her is all. How _is_ Arya?”

Gendry takes a step back, suddenly uncomfortable. How much does Jon know? Trystane had said Arya hadn’t talked much. Was Jon the exception? “She’s fine. She’s good. Happy to be in Winterfell.”

“Of course. Starks belongs in Winterfell. Wolf blood longs for the north.”

“Where does your blood long for, m’lord?” Gendry doesn’t mean to sound bitter, but it’s only when the words leave his mouth does he hear it reflected back in his tone.

Jon doesn’t take offense, a smile playing on his thin lips. “She told me about you, you know,” he says. “When Arya was here and saw that we were looking for you. ‘Gendry,’ I told her. ‘He’s a smith. He’s one of Robert’s bastards, one of the stags.’ And you know what she told me about you?”

Gendry shakes his head, eyes wide.

“I don’t care if you call him a stag, he’ll always be a bull to me.”

_My Arya._

And it doesn’t matter when the Queen in the South signs a document in ink as red as blood, or when she presses the flat of a sword to his shoulders and asks him to stand as Lord Gendry of House Baratheon. It doesn’t matter when Mya recedes his rightful seat in the council or when he wears a black and gold cloak with stags embroidered to the meeting.

She was right. He will always be a bull.

 

He listens the day Sansa receives a crow from Rickon detailing how Arya had learned of Ramsay Bolton’s existence and flayed his skin off before stabbing him through the heart. Gendry thinks he can see her wielding Needle and slicing the bastard’s skin off if he tries hard enough. Perhaps he should not try so hard lest the vision become reality.

The world has no lack of names.

His could be next.

 

Nights are desolate. He’s haunted by the way Arya had looked perched up in a tree, throwing back her neck in fervor, backing away from his bed, tasting her sister on his lips.

Gendry had lived above the forge in Winterfell in a cramped sooty space; now he has his own bedroom in the castle with a mattress filled with feathers and cotton and a window overlooking the sea. He used to eat at all odd hours whatever food he found cheap at the market or at the table of the royal staff; now he feasts every night with the royal family. He used to beat a hammer for a living and bed a beautiful woman at night; now they come to him constantly asking for signatures and advice regarding the smithy and council business.  

He had not belonged in Winterfell, and it surprises him when he doesn’t belong in King’s Landing either.

To alleviate tension and call sleep, he takes himself in hand even when he’s not hard, and shuts his eyes tight to the darkness of his chambers, pumping his arm under the sheets. The figure hunched over him trailing kisses down his throat has curling red hair and gray eyes and she speaks in riddles, and when she bites the skin of his neck, he comes with a wordless cry and opens his eyes before a face can form in his mind.

 

The day Sansa and Jon depart for King’s Landing is also the day Trystane and Myrcella leave for Dorne.

It is the day Gendry bends a knee to the Dragon Queen and begs her.

“Please let me leave, Your Grace. I was made to hold a hammer in my hands, not a quill. I cannot sit through council meetings, not like Mya. I cannot be a Baratheon.”

“Stand,” she commands him and he rises to his feet. “You’re asking me to free you of your obligations. Do you understand what it means to hold responsibility?”

He doesn’t know whether to agree and contradict himself or decline and admit his worthlessness. In the end, he says, “Your Grace, responsibility can only be fulfilled by one who accepts it.”

“Are you then refusing to accept your own?”

He knows Daenerys does not like him; it shows on her face every time her eyes fall to him. She probably sees murderers in his face. “I cannot accept something I do not know how to do.”

“The blood you carry within your veins,” she says tiredly, “is a promise. I was Khaleesi of the Dothraki people and I was happy there in that sea of grass. But I returned to Westeros because it was my duty. My blood screamed of obligation, of taking back the throne from the Usurpers and upholding responsibility.”

He listens sincerely, though he knows nothing she says will make him change his request and only her order will make him stay.

“Gendry, why do you look forlorn?” Daenerys asks him abruptly. “Are you really so unhappy here?”

Gendry blinks up at her. The question is unexpected. “Your Grace, I have already told you, I do not know how to sit in council and decide which armies need to be positioned in which lands, how to better defend from pirates from Sothoryos-”

She stops him sharply, “That’s not an answer to what I wanted to know. I asked why, midst the council, your thoughts are continents away and your words mindless babble.”

“My thoughts _are_ continents away,” Gendry admits.

“Your heart has been broken,” she doesn’t ask, she says, and he doesn’t need to open his mouth to confirm. “Will you return to Winterfell?”

“No, Your Grace. I will go to Dorne with Ser Trystane and his wife. He has offered me a place to stay at the Water Gardens.”

Queen Daenerys gives him a smile and Gendry can just make out a long fingered sorrow at the edge of her lips reeling her back. “So you are not running back to your love, you are running from her.”

 

Dorne burns him.

Despite the winter season, when Gendry travels with the Martells, he feels his cloak become redundant, then his overshirt, and he sweats through the thick fabric of his long sleeved shirt as they continue heading south through Highgarden.

Trystane’s realm, run by Lady Arianne who has been promised Prince Aegon, is sandy and dusty. There is nothing in Dorne to remind Gendry of Winterfell, from the thin silk tunic he wears to the food spicy enough to bring tears to his eyes. When Trystane tells him of letters from the north, he turns away and leaves. What could they tell him? Of Jon and Sansa’s wedding? Arya’s murders?

He spends his days shirtless, exploring the city, and his nights surrounded by women in lavish silks and jewels who come to him happily, shades of their darkness gleaming against his light skin slow to tan and eager to blister.

They all taste different, this one of pomegranates and that one of oranges, biting his lip and leaving marks down his chest. He tastes the honesty coating their tongues. None of them speak in riddles. He doesn’t stay with any of them for anything over than two nights.

_How can I stay with them when I couldn’t stay with her for longer?_

 

He does not belong in Dorne.  

But then, Gendry thinks often, he does not belong anywhere.

 

If time was fluid, like a river, he would row back in it until he was a bastard again. He would find the place where his heart was uncomplicated and full of childish longing for a girl with brown hair and acorns on her dress, and throw down his anchor to root in those few days forever.

 

He dreams about her sometimes, always on the rare nights he is alone, when the moon is full or he has spent the day with dogs. She’s always beautiful and he always leaves her. He wakes with an aching guilt in his chest, not knowing who _she_ was and refusing to think her name.

Until the day he wakes with a steel dirk against his throat and a figure sitting almost intimately on his mattress. His breath catches in his throat, eyes not yet adjusted to the dark, fear slamming into him as quickly as consciousness did. His pulse spikes. All he can see is the glint of eyes and the sharpened point of the blade, but he still knows.

“Arya.”

“You are a coward. You did not return to Winterfell. You ran instead, you ran hoping your feet would not touch the ground, you ran hoping your shadow would not give chase, you ran on stumbling legs and weary feet until you reached King’s Landing- and the you ran some more,” she sneers.

“I did run.”

“Why?”

“I was ashamed.”

The tip presses harder, drawing blood. This is not Rickon’s blade, held back by Osha’s words and a desire to know. This is Arya’s blade, harsh and resentful, seeking to taste him. This is the faceless Braavosi Sansa had warned him of. “Ashamed of what you had done, but not ashamed for abandoning me _again_?” she hisses.

He hesitates to talk, afraid any movement of his throat would only drive the blade deeper into his flesh. “Arya, please. I couldn’t face you. Not after what I’d done.”

“I could kill you here. No more shame. No more bull.”

“You could. Will you?”

For a moment, Gendry is sure she will slit his throat and let him bleed out on the floor and his body would only be found when it began to stink and fester in the Dornish heat. Then Arya traces the blade up his neck delicately like a thread and stops at his lips so he can taste the cold metal. “Why does it always end with this?” she whispers. “Either you kill me or I kill you.”

“I am too craven to kill you,” he mumbles from behind the dirk.

She sighs and leans closer. “A small death is no different from a large one. You have killed pieces of me for years now. You are a plague. You have seeped into my soul and I wander feverishly searching for relief, and I am dying all the time. You did this killing.”

Her riddles aren’t gone, he notices, shifting back to speak freely. “You came for me, Arya. You found me.”

“Were you lost?”

“Were you?”

“I was wandering from sea to woods to desert, but I was never lost,” she says, lowering the dirk.

It doesn’t make sense, none of it makes sense, not a single word from her mouth makes sense to him. He needs her to be direct and clear. “Are you angry with me?”

“No,” she answers immediately as he’d hoped. “I’m not angry. I thought I was, but not at you or Sansa. I was mad…” Arya trails off, frustrated, to collect herself. Gendry has never seen her hesitate at the cusp of her words before; she always seemed to have so many of them ready at the tip of her tongue, puzzling him. She takes a deep breath before she speaks again, “I was mad because _I_ didn’t get to be here. Sansa has been through much and it’s unfair that I wasn’t there to give her companionship during the long winter nights of Winterfell when she was alone. If anything, I’m grateful that you provided her with comfort when she needed it.”

“Sansa comforted me more than I did her,” he answers.

Gendry had suspected from the start that he had taken Sansa’s bed to alleviate how much he missed Arya; it had never occurred to him that Sansa would have taken him a lover for the same reason. He feels a welling of shame inside. How could he have been so insensitive to the cruelties Starks have endured? His blood would have turned to water by now. These siblings, martyrs each of them- chains wrapped around their ankles dragging the weight of this world’s sins and leaving tracks in the mud as deep as their strange northern eyes.

They’re both quiet for a moment.

“You should know that she’s happy now, with Jon. Do you love her?” Arya asks abruptly, looking straight at him.

“No!” Before he even knows he’s saying it, the words are tumbling from his lips, “I love _you._ ”

She reaches up and touches the outside of his eye and her fingers come away wet. Gendry’s own tears catch him unawares.

“What if I cannot love you back? What if the wolf inside me capable of love has drowned in the salty sea and all that is left is a howling snarling beast with thorns for skin?”

Gendry wraps his arms around her slender form, pulling her closer until he can feel the dirk between them against his ribs, her heartbeat echoing back in his own chest. “Then I will love that beast without asking it to love me back.”

“It doesn’t deserve love, not after all the names it’s crossed off.”

He kisses her forehead, her eyelids, the tip of her nose, the place on her cheek where her laugh lines would be if she ever laughed, her hard lips. She lets him, motionless as a doll. “Everyone deserves to be loved.”

 

When he wakes in the morning, she is gone. The only proof he has that she was not a dream is a thin jagged line of dried blood on his neck.

 

He sends away the women who come to his chambers the next night, giggling and wanting. They pout and demand and explanation and Gendry stammers out some excuse. He sits on the mattress in the light of a single shaky candle and stares at his window until it creaks open and her lithe body jumps from the frame down to the floor soundlessly.

“You waited for me.”

“I knew you would come.”

“I didn’t. I almost didn’t.”

He doesn’t know what to say, to Arya telling him she nearly did not care enough to trek up the palace walls (that are smooth stone outside and thoroughly unclimbable, he had checked in the sunlight), but something must have happened to change her mind because she stands here now throwing shadows with Needle strapped around her waist and sweat glistening on her breastbone in the low necked thin cotton slip several sizes too large for her and he can remember what her skin tastes like and suddenly _he can’t breathe._

Gendry leaps off the bed and his lips come crashing down on hers, pushing her back against the glass panes of the window that he isn’t afraid of breaking because he isn’t afraid of anything in this moment. She kisses him back, just as fierce as her fingers pulling his collar closer, and he knows she missed him. Her tongue is truer in his mouth than her own, leaving no room for riddles.

With her legs wrapped around his waist and her lips locked to his, Gendry brings her back to the bed, slamming her down on the mattress and ripping off her clothes, leaving her sword with the scraps of fabric she won’t need. He knows better than to fear for her safety. If anything, he is the one to come out of the encounter bruised and bloody, already her nails on his back digging in painfully.

He fucks her like her bones are on fire and he must suffocate every inch of her body, starve her of oxygen to prevent the flames from spreading and melting all of Dorne. His hands wander over her smooth stomach and he swallows her moans whole, unwilling to let even the air taste the sound of her voice, _mine._

Arya comes with a guttural growl under him, but he doesn’t, not yet, all of his willpower into making this last. His hips slow when he touches his lips at the soft feathery skin in the hollow of her throat, focusing on memorizing the salty taste. If he never sees her after this night, if she chooses not to climb into his room again, Gendry wants to remember this forever.

Gendry feels himself lose control when she comes again. He doesn’t fall over her as is his habit with the other women, though his muscles are exhausted. He keeps himself propped up on both elbows and stares. Her lips are red and swollen from the pressure of his mouth, her eyes dark and unreadable. But for the first time, he thinks he can see humanity under the darkness, fighting and contorting to be set free.

“Arya. Arya, I’m sorry.”

He doesn’t know what he is apologizing for. Everything. She looks away from him, focusing on the candle at his bedside. Her grey irises dance with light, pupils wide. “Don’t be,” she says curtly.

“What will you do now? What will _we?_ ”

“The story- our story. It’s still flickering, isn’t it?”

“We can make it stop flickering. We can set it down proper. You and me together, just like it always should have been.”

“No, not always,” Arya pushes him back so both sit up on their knees. “We were never supposed to be together _always._ Maybe at the end, yes, but you needed Sansa’s embrace and I needed death’s company. I needed to feed on those less worthy or it would have been your flesh I devoured.”

Gendry sighs, “Someday, you will stop speaking in riddles.”

She leans in and kisses him and the tenderness of her action, completely unlike her normal chaos, makes Gendry fall in love with her all over again, as if he’s a bastard once more and has just discovered she’s a girl under her clothing, watching her in Harrenhall from a distance, the way she had dreamed of a flaming sword in her hands, the anger on her face when she accused the Hound and he had first felt the overwhelming urge to hold her and protect her from the dangers of Westeros.

It was Essos he should’ve been more worried about, where she had befriended the Stranger and forgotten the common tongue.

“I’m going back to Winterfell, Gendry.” It is the first time she says his name in months and he feels a strange thrill to hear it. “I left my family for this. I left Nymeria.”

“Why did you come at all?”

Arya’s lips lift in disdain. “Did you think I wouldn’t?”

“You almost didn’t,” he echoes her words back.

She gets off the bed and asks over her shoulder, “Are you returning to Winterfell with me?”

For once, no riddles, just a straightforward question. It leaves him blinking in astonishment. Throat suddenly dry, Gendry watches her walk to the window. “What will you do if I say yes?”

“Come back tomorrow in a gown of silk to ask for your hand,” she grins wolfishly. “You know, set our story down _proper_.”

A smile tugs at the corners of Gendry’s lips at the thought of Arya down on one knee in her gown, dirtying the knees, neck stretched up as she waited impatiently for his answer. He imagines her kneeling shamelessly in the midst of the Dornish court as she confessed her love, Sand Snakes snickering in the corner and Arianne’s face twisted in surprise, Trystane nodding like some wise man. Gendry knows she’ll do it too, and the whole world will hear about it and talk.

“If you’re planning that tomorrow, I’d advise you to leave these chambers right now.”

She frowns. “Why’s that?”

“Because if you don’t leave, I will ravish you again and never let you go at all.”

“Never?” Arya’s eyebrow quirks up. “Is that a challenge, Ser Gendry Baratheon?”

“Only if you accept it, M’lady Stark.”

And when her face lights up, there is only the faintest elusive glimmer of dark in it, fading. Arya laughs, foreign lines he’s never seen appearing in the creases outside her eyes and cheeks, launching herself back into his arms. Perhaps that darkness will never leave her, fleeting on her features when she's angry or reminiscent. Maybe she'll even have more names in the future and Needle has not yet had it's fill of revenge.

But with her skin against his, Gendry knows he has finally found where he belongs. And it was no city or palace- it was her.

She is home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks if you've been with me until the end. Hope it's your OTP in the endgame next time. I leave you with the wonderful but unusual mental image of Arya proposing to Gendry in the heat of Dorne.


End file.
